The weaknesses and failures of incrementalism
This is a hard topic for me personally, so please be gentle. I am at my core an institutionalist and an incrementalist, so I tend to want to both value and improve institutions through incremental (bit-by-bit) change.
A common concern and criticism of people who are impatient with incremental changes is that there would be tons of unintended consequences. While that concern resonates with me, it clearly doesn't seem to resonate with much of anyone else right now.
So in this I feel alone, frankly, and a lot of the reason for that loneliness is because incrementalism seems to have been firmly rebuked by both left and right wing political groups around the world. Help me understand what's happening. Where is incrementalism failing for you? Do you see any role for bit-by-bit change?
The scope of this thread could expand to the high heavens, so please understand how widely varied the examples might be that we each might bring to this discussion.
For me personally it comes down to the untrustworthiness of the other side. You give the right an inch and they take a mile and call you a Stalinist while doing it. If you know your enemies are going to try their hardest to undo everything you've worked for the second they take power there's no reason not to go for drastic, difficult to reverse changes.
There's also the association of incrementalism with "milquetoast moderatism", such as MLK criticizes in "Letter from Birmingham Jail". This probably isn't entirely fair, but there is a large overlap between those two groups.
I get where you're coming from on an emotional level (I am a liberal), but I still can't help but be concerned about the legitimate claims that too much change, too fast, is too open unintended consequences that it becomes arrogant to generally support aggressive and broad action. There is a reason the left is still quite upset about Citizens United, for example, and that reason is that it was a decision that did not have to be what it became from the case that was brought to it. The justices who made that decision had to know (since it was plastered in John Paul Stevens' dissent) that the broad nature of the ruling would have unintended consequences, and they didn't seem to think that fear was enough reason for caution. Now our whole campaign finance system has had shadowy corporate money infesting it ever since, because we haven't been able to agree on a campaign finance law that demands disclosure without casting it in partisan terms, effectively blocking reasonable attempts at compromise/incremental reform.
I think incrementalism isn't sexy at all, and any one who promotes it tends to have to focus necessarily on small changes that work out, or small changes that don't but then get noticed and reversed. The small nature of the successes and failures makes it hard to preach the greatness of the approach, especially when, as you say, you have people who fear that an incrementalist's true purpose is to slow or stop social progress entirely and to demand a timetable for people to get rights that have long been denied to them.
But let's be clear: just because a change is drastic doesn't mean it's harder to reverse than an incremental change. Just means it might happen through a different/specific channel. A drastic change like Roe v. Wade making the abolition of abortion outside the domain of rights a state has over its citizens? Sure, and you'd basically need a constitutional amendment or a decades' long education-to-careerpath approach to cultivating a body of legal authorities that would allow you to undo it. Unfortunately, we're now at the point where that seems to be coming to a head as the right took the second approach I just mentioned and has been motivated at the voting booth more by that particular issue than the left.
But foreign policy has gone through remarkable, drastic changes over the past century, and it's worth remembering some of the extent to which those policies shifted, reversed, and reversed again. I would typically say whether a country sees another country as an ally is a fairly big change, especially when it comes with aid and shared economic destinies involved. And we're in the midsts of one of those shifts right now (and it isn't at all clear how drastic that shift will end up being).
The final comment I have relates to the bit about milquetoast moderatism. Every approach has people who use their approach to mask their intent. You have partisans who criticize and praise with their partisan ends chiefly in mind rather than what they value and believe. You have moderates who would prefer everyone to get along because the fighting causes them personal stress rather than because they see any inherent value to order over chaotic change. That's fair to point out. It seems strange to discard the approach out of hand because of the purpose of some of the approach's practitioners.
This conversation has gone pretty far off the rails and doesn't resemble anything productive any more. I don't see how it continuing can possibly improve, so I will PM the text of this last reply of yours to BuckeyeSundae, but I'm going to remove almost all of the posts that are just the two of you going back and forth.
To be clear, I'm not putting any blame on you personally, your post is just the current "tip" of the conversation, so that's where I'm replying.
Fair enough. I should probably just learn to let things like this go. I think things were starting to be worked out, so I think this would be a good case for whisper comments :)
Funny thing is I think we were both trying to let this conversation go, but that's just the nature of things when we each feel wronged. Sorry for my part in this.
I replied to your PM of course, but for anyone seeing this: Thanks for taking the time to send this, and I'm sorry for my part as well. 🙇♀️
I'd say that there are changes that are impossible to change bit-by-bit, because the target is too resilient and is reactive to change.
For example, if you aim to remove the power of the mega-rich to keep increasing their wealth at the detriment of all others, you might try to chip away at them. But they'll react by not only stopping the change you're trying to make, but also by increasing their defenses against whatever you did against them. Their power is much greater, so their reaction is bigger than the incremental action, not equal.
I don't think incrementalism is 100% flawed, as it can bring about great change against problems that don't react, but the biggest problems are reactive, and can only be removed by large sweeping changes that make them unable to react.
Aren't you basically saying that the mega-rich just focus much more and much more easily on the issues that you struggle to inspire the poor to give the same amount of energy about? It isn't even necessarily that their power is greater but that they are much more intentional and sustained with their use of it to promote their interests.
It would seem fair to comment about incrementalism's weakness in this sense because people like to promise the world but then when it comes due, they deliver only a grain of sand. People remember that. It would seem stronger to promise only what you feel you can actually deliver, but it doesn't sell nearly as well.
If I said, "I will make sure the Department of Labor will respect the education levels and make requirement regulations proportionate to the actual skills needed for the position," like three people in all of America will nod their heads to what I just said while the rest will ignore me. "Yeah sure, whatever. That doesn't impact me." They'd say.
No, because there is no power symmetry. You can't just dismiss it as "focus". If the 1% hold half of the world's wealth, they hold half of the worlds power (or more, since money can also buy political power, making them powerful not only financially). So even if all of the 99% focused on the problems of inequality, but in an incremental fashion, the mega-rich would still be so powerful that they'd stop and counter-act any change.
The politicians are owned by the rich. And the rich will never allow us to vote their wealth away. The whole idea of calling congressmen for change is flawed, as they won't care about any calls if they know that they'll get a huge campaign donation from the other side, come next election cycle. And they know that despite letting down the people who called, the campaign money is enough to attract more voters, covering for any potential lost voters.
I'm not sure I'd dismiss the power asymmetry along grounds of attention span. It is a simple truth that one side has more attention they can afford to grant an issue than the other. There is a practice in law widely known about where people or companies with massive resources simply plan to out-endure people who come lodging legal complaints. The goal is not to seek equitable understandings or justice but to grind down a plaintiff's legal resources until they can no longer keep bringing the case. I see a similar thing happening with the use of attention. To that issue, I don't think I'm dismissing this power asymmetry at all but pointing out a clear path through which it's realized.
I will push back on this one other point:
In the main I would say it is not that politicians are owned by the rich, but that they are frequently one and the same as the rich. The poorest senator is who? Seems like Debbie Stabenow in Michigan by every available estimate ($12k to $50K net worth) and after that you jump into net worths of about $200k--which might not be all that large for careered politicians, but for young guys that is probably a little high. Bernie Sanders, icon of the left and champion of the poor, has a net worth estimated to be on average $700,000, which puts him (as of 2015) as the 23rd poorest senator. The vast majority of Senators are much richer still.
Every politician can do math. They know that an issue that riles their votes en masse is an issue to take seriously. So if an issue inspires so much reaction that their phones are flooded about the issue, as surely they must be and have been over these child separations, that is direct and loud pressure on representatives that makes them hear the concern about a particular news story. The problem is (coming back to earlier), sometimes the attention simply cannot be maintained. The people who are most interested through their vulnerability to see change on a particular issue are also typically the ones who have the most shit on their plate to deal with. That means the equitable burden to engage and make your voice heard falls to those who have a bit more time, a bit more attention, a bit more privilege however gained.
From my own personal observations, the most significant changes always seem to take the least amount of time. The United States constitution was drafted in 116 days (https://www.reference.com/history/long-did-write-u-s-constitution-b2e607ca2cb638bd), which isn't very long if you think about it. And the US didn't have an industrial increment, we had an industrial freaking revolution. Many of the most well made machines were designed in an order of magnitude less time then through conventional methods (SR-71, U2, Falcon 1, Falcon 9). The B2 bomber by Northrop by comparison was plagued with cost overruns and miles of red tape and bureaucracy at every step of the way, and produced a mediocre end result compared to the initial design (this is a pretty good example of an incremental step from the B1 / SR71). The space shuttle (took ~11 years to develop) was more or less an incremental step (although it had the potential to be revolutionary) from the Saturn V (took ~5 years to develop), and was actually a step backwards. Actually if you want a good example of incremental development, Boeing's space program is a pretty good example. They're still using the same rockets they were launching in the sixties, and their next huge project is actually a step backwards from the freaking shuttle, many people who follow this stuff (me included) don't believe it will even launch more then two times before getting shut down. Our general production does not tend to be linear throughout history, and when it is it tends to be a downward slope. In fact, the last 4-500 years it's been anything but an incremental step forward
It's true that the US put its constitution together in a very short amount of time, but it is the culmination of lifetimes (and several generations of writing) of enlightenment philosophy and thinking about government's role in people's lives. The people who were at that (ironically extra-constitutional) convention to talk about this draft for a constitution were investing a lot of their thinking and experiences and gravitas into that document. The industrial revolution can be said to have happened very quickly too, but it was in part driven forward the pressures of a Civil Freaking War that took a huge number of lives and maimed many millions more.
I feel it's appropriate to point out that incrementalism hasn't been the only way change happens (because there are tons of examples of how sudden change has created massive shifts in a population in a very short period of time), but they are almost all weak to the observation that each and every one of them came with massive unintended consequences that impacted so many lives in a negative way.
The very strength of incrementalism is its ability to change course to address the pain points that are being observed. There is time to observe. There is process to adjust. Makes it terribly complicated and difficult to sell, but damn does it save people from a certain form of misery. It means that you have to engage in a sort of trade off to argue successfully against incrementalism: that the pain of slow change is likely greater than the pain of sudden change. This is especially true, for example, with the changes necessary to make a meaningful impact on climate change. Slow changes simply aren't going to get the job done in almost any case, but they're the most politically possible to push for. So ...
The thing about human history up until the industrial era isn't that it's this steady line toward bettered living quality, but that it's filled with sharp increases and decreases for certain groups of people, sometimes entire civilizations. The fall of the (Western) Roman Empire can be seen as a cataclysmic event that set European civilization back several technological rungs in a lot of ways (though not at all "to the Stone age" as some would say). It is this prescient idea that civilizations can sharply regress with sudden events that makes leaders conservative (in the small c sense) in their applications of power. People whose interests are to see small adjustments to the current order are necessarily those who frequently preach its good, and it is they who are normally the ones who coach for no change at all and if there must be change, make it small.
But what I'm saying is good is somewhat distinct from those group of change-resisters. I think change is necessary, always. There will never be an institution or organization that perfectly addresses the needs of its people because the people in that organization change. Their ideas shift. Their values shift. The problems that they see as most important to address shift. So the flexibility to address those problems, to change and address the problems of the day, is an institution's most valuable asset. I would actually say the Catholic Church is the best example of this, but not many people in this circle always enjoy thinking about the Catholic Church in a positive light.
Ah I think I misunderstood your original post. For technological change I would still argue that incremental change leads to lots of disappointment, errors, and failure to implement specific features. I believe this post however is in regards to more widespread social change, and this I would mostly agree with (I would still argue the constitution actually fits better with the first category since the objective was to set out a series of well-defined rules that govern a complex system, much like engineering. They may have used the culmination of lifetimes of experience, which is basically what a society is anyways, but so has everyone in that category). If you take any revolution in history, 99.9% of the time it will be filled with bloodshed and maybe a genocide or two, the American Revolutionary War was actually incredibly peaceful next to Haiti or France or most others. I would also say that this isn't a requirement of revolution. Take MLK jr or Gandhi's revolutions for example, sure they weren't exactly peaceful (at least to the participants), but a super majority of the people in them came out of it intact and in a much better place than before. So I would say incremental change with a stabilizing central force (ex: the catholic church) is the most consistent way to insure a peaceful and permanent social shift, and I wouldn't say I'm an advocate against it, but it is possible to gain the same or even better results with a revolution if it is logically orchestrated by people who are smart and motivated
Oh my poor Széchenyi, will the struggle between you and Kossuth never end?
Remember, you have in common than those who would destroy you
It seems like every left-leaning group of people gets bound up in this fight every time they are on the verge of actually accomplishing something. It's terribly frustrating.
If you're in the mood to gloomily explore just how true this is, I highly recommend Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast, particularly Season 07 on the Revolutions of 1848.
I've been up to date all year. I'm not sure whether to be happy or depressed about that.
I used to work in IT projects, where I learned about the iterative development process: building software in small increments, step by step, feature by feature. The idea is that each new feature adds value to the users, even if they don't yet have the whole system. It also allows you to stop and get feedback from users about how the system is developing, and allows you to tweak your plans depending on their feedback - and depending on changes in the external environment. I agree with this approach. It makes sense to achieve some progress in gradual steps even if you can't achieve everything you want immediately.
This is also addressed by the saying "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" - which reminds me of something that happened in Australian politics about a decade ago. The then Prime Minister described climate change as "the great moral challenge of our generation", and his government created a policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They presented their proposed legislation to parliament. The Greens (who held the balance of power in the Senate and whose support was therefore essential to pass the legislation because the opposition opposed it) looked at the proposed legislation and rejected it. Their explanation was that the legislation wasn't perfect. Sure, it was good and would have resulted in some greenhouse gas reductions, but those reductions weren't big enough or fast enough for the Greens' liking. They held out for amendments to the proposed legislation, and got some compromise from the government, but not enough. When push came to shove, they voted the legislation down.
That decision by the Greens has resulted in a decade of argument in Australia over climate change, as various factions and governments try to make change, or deliberately try not to make change, and absolutely no progress has been made on this issue in that time. The Greens kicked an own goal by refusing that legislation. They could have had a scheme in place that would have allowed some partial progress towards their goal of reducing greenhouse gases, but they turned it down. They blew their one and only chance in the past decade to make progress because they wouldn't accept an incremental change - it had to be all... or, sadly, nothing. The perfect was the enemy of the good.
EDIT: Fixing word order.
That's so frustrating to read. I'd confess that the issue that springs to my mind most prominently when it comes to recent Australian politics is the double-sided nature of its immigration policy. The legal side of permanent residents? Actually probably not so bad. It sounds like it can take a bit of time to get papers, but other than that if you qualify and you prove basically that you're probably not going to be a financial burden to the state (easier with a sponsor), then you're probably good. That seems to be a case where incremental change, measuring the effectiveness of the program and the satisfaction of the people who go through, makes a good bit of sense.
But on the other side of that issue are those boats though. How Australia has been handling its illegal immigrants (especially those seeking asylum) is a scandal that at the moment only really America seems to rival right now. I mean, your government's been running a center in Papua New Guinea for years until recently (allegedly) saying they could shove their refugees there in a restricted camp until it figured out what to do with them (which, let's be real, wasn't going to happen for most of them), or it's towing boats back to Indonesia. It seems like that asylum seeking program is, uh, in need of some more severe reform, or is that just a mistaken view from across the pond?
I'm not sure how we moved from discussing incrementalism to Australia's policy on immigrants and refugees. That's a minefield I didn't know I was walking into! I was just using the Greens' decision as an example of how a failure to embrace incrementalism can lead to an "all or nothing" approach which, paradoxically, makes it harder to achieve progress.
As for Australia's treatment of refugees... it's fucked. In my ever-so-humble opinion. And the opinion of many Australians.
Yeah, sorry to jump topics from the one you put forward. I was trying to show that I read your comment and appreciated it rather than simply saying so. Got me off on another topic entirely (and perhaps one that would show a clear weakness of incrementalism in attempts to address that issue).
I'm not a huge fan of incrementalism as a method of change. It works pretty well for teaching some topics and techniques for some learning styles, but for reforming government...?
I like the incremental deadlines for ecological improvements for manufacturing waste and pollution. It gives leeway in budgeting for changes to procedure and lets people plan for personnel changes. But any incremental plans require an overarching authority and a solid architecture. It doesn't do well if the goals are changed every year or two.
I feel that both drastic and incremental changes have unforseen problems crop up. Considering the cost of planning, documentation, instruction, and rollout with each problem addressed, I would rather it happen in a short period of time instead of over a period of years. Then people are upset for shorter periods. Could they be less upset if given more time? I submit that it is less wear on the nervous system to have high stress for a short time than medium grade stress for a long time. For me it's not a question more or less misery. There's going to be misery either way. I prefer the drastic change misery.
One class of government policy that simultaneously difficult to talk about in great detail and an excellent example of incrementalism (as that's how these things go) is anti-poverty programs. Us in the national sense love to talk about Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or CHIP (Child's Health Insurance Program), or SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program), or food stamps (Effectively: SNAP), but there are all sorts of programs and people working at local levels to help people get access to these national programs as well as other state and local level assistance that might exist, such as local child care programs, or employment assistance centers that help people improve their resumes.
Several cities are now paying homeless people to help clean up their streets, and thereby giving them an employment history that they might be able to take with them to another, (presumably) better paying job. Some of THOSE jobs programs provide housing and healthcare benefits (this second part required by Obamacare) to the otherwise homeless workers.
For communities in poverty, sometimes breathtaking rates of poverty up in the 40%-50% range depending on how you measure it, one of the chief complaints I'm hearing is that there simply are no institutions available that might help people in those communities. The churches have no money. The food banks have no food. The schools struggle to operate. The local municipalities are often overworked and under-resourced, and combine that with a pattern among people in each party to either demand top-down solutions that the federal government will impose on them or eliminate any assistance entirely. There is a clear middle ground that the people in these communities would prefer, and that is to be listened to as to what unique needs their community has, rather than to be told "you can do this my way or they can eliminate any help."
What sort of drastic changes would you suggest for this sort of situation or is it one that you think incrementalism might have some advantages that drastic change really doesn't?
Whew. Before I write an ocean of words back, I have a question for you. I feel that the poverty issue and the homeless issue have some seriously different roots, and can't be lumped together so easily. So, then.
Is there ever a moment where being homeless is okay? If someone has rejected the current structure of the society they live in, must they be forced to conform?
Sure. If they have chosen it, with sound mind (the mentally ill and substance - addicted tend toward homelessness - but it isn't "chosen", per se), and aren't subjecting anyone else who doesn't have the wherewithal to make such a decision (children, pets), and aren't expecting society to support them (via panhandling or food bank use).
With sound mind. That's an interesting and explosive phrase. There are certainly a large number of people who would be considered not of sound mind who are homeless. Also substance addicted, who I tend to categorize as also not of sound mind. Many of the substance abusing people I've met were self medicating in situations beyond their mental capacity to solve or endure.
I need to put out there that I've had a fair amount of contact with homeless people. Not volunteering in a soup kitchen for a few hours now and then. Not as a social worker trying to "rehabilitate" them into conforming with what other people call normal society. But as people.
My mom sort of collects them, the way "crazy cat ladies" collect strays. She routinely feeds whoever shows up every Sunday - NOT "charitably ministering to the unfortunate," but as a place where auntie is cool with you hanging out and topping off. She doesn't demand anything except treating other people around with courtesy. She catches up with the gossip, listens for needs that she can match up with resources that are surplused elsewhere, and generally just lets people be themselves.
Some of them are transitory. They're at a down point in their lives and move on. Some of them are eccentric. But a good half of them do not have a mental structure and way of thinking that would allow them to function in standard society, let alone be successful. I'd give detailed and specific circumstances for perusal if it wouldn't violate their privacy.
So. If it's "okay" to be that way, where are they supposed to find a space to exist like that? There are property lines and satellite mapping and regulations and public safety and people who are afraid of dirt and others offended by lack of shirt and tie (strange that people want to fix it by providing shirt and tie instead if respecting the t-shirt) and charitable foundations that push their own values...
If society does not have any allowances for people who are not able to function in the arbitrary structure mandated by majority or money, and then condems people for failing to comply, how is that any different than telling physically disabled people to just suck it up and crawl up the steps since there aren't any ramps?
You're reading a lot into my response. I was responding to, is it "okay"? I don't personally feel it's okay for anyone to be homeless, but I don't get to make those decisions for everyone. Hence my very carefully worded response - it's okay when it's "chosen". There are people who do. I recognize this is not the majority.
There's a big difference between "rejected" and, "not able to function in the arbitrary structure mandated by majority or money".
Maybe! I think my view of homeless might be steeped in an implicit understanding of the old school idea of the American dream and access to things you might normally almost only find in a home or a pool (baths, laundry, hygiene stuff).
So if someone is choosing to be homeless--and it's the sort of situation I'd want to be clear is their choice, and not economically forced on them--if they have a place they are comfortable being and it's not TOO illegal to be there (like a public space or sleeping in their car or something), then I think that's mostly fine.
I am in favor of both evolution and dramatic change in healthy proportions.
I am in favor of evolution because it helps maintain stability and quality. I am in favor of dramatic change because sometimes it can shake up stagnation and sometimes you need a lot of moving parts to make a whole module. In my opinion, the best paths are usually built out of inspired complex ideas which are integrated into an evolved, iterative process of quality and refinement.
(You may have noticed that I've used "evolution" instead of "incrementalism". That's on purpose, because the words we use change the entire frame and emotional perception of the topic. It's just a linguistic persuasion game, but it makes a difference, and I prefer evolution because it just sounds cooler.)
A few analogies and examples that come to mind:
Fark's 2007 design change disaster - they made a considerable design change (by the standards of the time) which was reasonable, and they believed necessary, but did not consult the community. The community hated the change. One admin made the catastrophic mistake of telling them "You'll get over it", which totally dismissed their complaints and worse, their emotions.
The internal combustion engine is a marvel of human ingenuity. Someone had the idea of making an engine that uses explosive combustion to turn a crank, and sustains itself once started - and had to put all the pieces together in just the right way in order for it to do anything at all. It's a complex, dramatic idea, radically different from something like the bicycle or the horse. It's also an evolved idea, drawing upon the development of other forms of motors and automated means of propelling an axle developed for years and years. Today's internal combustion engines are so refined and evolved from the early forms that they're light years beyond in terms of efficiency, power, and cleanliness. In my opinion, the internal combustion engine is an iconic symbol of human success.
I once created cardboard wings intending to fly by jumping down some stairs at my grandma's house (operating under the assumption that i needed sufficient height to catch the air). They didn't work as intended - i realized early in my tests that it was smarter to just jump from the bottom few steps rather than the top, so thankfully no serious injuries occurred. It was a Bad Idea.
The Kulaks were farmers in the Soviet Union who during the communist revolution were persecuted and killed by people who believed their success was built through the exploitation of others. After the farmers were gone, the farms began to fail leading to some of the worst famines in recorded history.
The odds of winning at a casino are stacked in favor of the house. It's possible to win big by betting all on red, but more often you go broke that way, and make progress against the house instead through small, gradual, iterative wins.
Most ideas are bad, like my cardboard wings and killing farmers. The best ideas survive, generally speaking, while the bad ones fall aside - sometimes without happy endings. Sometimes dramatic good ideas to shake up stale systems ought to succeed, but because people are instinctively predisposed to react to sudden change with anxiety (which itself is an evolved mechanism to protect against bad changes), it sometimes takes some negotiation and persuasion which requires a lot of work and/or skill. The ideas which succeed tend to persist, and serve as a solid base upon which improvement and new successes can evolve from. Some of those adaptations are themselves radical concepts which would not normally have manifested through an iterative process.
Evolution is a great, proven system for generating success. Dramatic change is a high risk system, sometimes has high reward, and works best when it's a non-mission-critical part of an evolved system. Don't bet all on red. Do come up with ingenious new propulsion mechanisms.
It's interesting that you shifted the term you'd prefer to use from incrementalism to evolution of two reasons: 1. You get rid of agency (which I would guess is because you see markets as the best way to let good ideas sift to prominence while bad ideas fall away). 2. Evolution in the scientific sense requires death for a species' fit to be established; the better the fit, the more that idea crowds out the competition and kills that competition (as well as any food the species might need to survive).
The effect of both, if I'm reading that fairly, is to remove morality from the equation. Human judgment, being flawed, has no place in the decision-making, so too human concepts of morality. That's awkward to me. But is that reading fair? If it's not fair, how exactly are these good ideas being sorted from the bad? But if it is fair, how would your preferred system--and this is not meant to be inflammatory, but we're about to cross into very emotionally sketchy waters I'd wager--be different from the popular concept of social darwinism that took hold of many rational people in Europe near the beginning of World War II?
I super appreciate your comment and want to explore it, and I hope you take these questions in that light.
Wow! This response really surprised and amazed me! My use of "evolution" as a different framing for gradual change than "incrementalism" was intended to persuade people who didn't like the idea of gradual change and instead prefer dramatic change (I have a completely positive emotional association with evolution and it didn't even occur to me that a negative emotional association with it would be a thing), instead my persuasion attempt failed completely on you, the person who I was agreeing with! This strikes me as almost absurdly comical - and the extremes of negative association make it even moreso; death! loss of agency! immorality! social darwinism! Basically the worst possible reception of an idea imaginable!
So thank you. You've taught me a valuable lesson - that just because something has a positive connotation for me (i.e. progress toward better things, intelligence emerging out of complex dynamic systems, etc.) doesn't mean someone else doesn't have entirely different emotional associations with that same thing.
I hesitate to even argue against what you've said because 1) I don't want to risk making you more in favor of radical change than incrementalism in the process xD and 2) I don't want to get in the business of appearing to try to defend against those horrible things that occurred to your imagination, and 3) it feels like it would be wasted energy since we both already agree that incremental change is generally more appealing than radical change, and this would be an argument entirely about linguistic persuasion strategy rather than incrementalism itself.
edit: "appearing to try"
Oh please don't take my questions as saying your attempts have been a failure! It could have been that my reading on those two points was unfair. You said nothing, after all, about the role of the market in sorting good ideas from bad. You also said nothing about whether removing agency is an intent for that word change. Either one of those assertions could be flawed understandings of your view, and if they are then the last question is especially flawed on my part.
Please see those questions as an attempt to get you to clarify a part of your stance I was struggling with, not as a rebuking of your attempt.
I do find it comical that one would have to disavow death, the loss of agency, social darwinism, and immorality. But just to be totally clear: I disavow death, loss of agency, social darwinism, and immorality.
So I hope I can make clear that I was not seeking to force you to feel like you had to disavow death and social darwinism, but I was seeking to get rid of uncertainty by focusing on the two potential reasons you might have wanted to choose evolution over incrementalism (reasons that you have now made clear are not ones you hold yourself). I chose those two particular reasons not to be unfair but because they were potential reasonable other reasons that sprang to my mind as possible rhetorical downsides for using evolution over incrementalism. Part of the reason I was trying to be as delicate as I could be about the potential implications of what I was saying is that I wanted to avoid exactly the way you've reacted.
It seems that you think I was one step away from calling you a nazi, but really I was just asking for clarification because IF we if we remove human agency through using market to sort ideas, AND if we remove morality as a guide or control on those markets, then we can get into the sketchy doomsday scenario that you and I both seem not to want.
I think that some problems can ONLY be solved incrementally, and anyone who doesn't see that probably just hasn't really thought about it. If you want an educated society, that has to happen generation by generation. I live in a poor rural community--the older people get around here, no offense to them, the more likely they are to be stupid as a dizzy gnat in hell. There are people all over who've never read a book all the way through except the Bible, who answer questions with tall tales and whatever they can pull out of their hat, who have no concept of what are today considered basic scientific principles, and who in many cases did not even complete high school.
There are people like that in my generation as well, but they're not common. You can try and institute dramatic change if you want, and maybe that would make things go a little faster, but you also stand a risk of alienating people and I doubt that you'd sway too many more people.
And as far as political and economic issues, I'm really kind of frustrated with politics. I don't think that government is a very good platform for societal change. It is a powerful platform, but that doesn't make it good.
At this point, I have begun to believe that a much better solution is to do our very best as a society to help children grow up in a healthy environment and find the middle ground between their ideals and the real world. Greedy CEOs, drug addicts, mercenaries/soldiers, corrupt politicians, suicide victims, and whatever else you can name are all people who have, at the very least, some messed up priorities.
Those people used to be kids. And I think that if a kid is not just shown, but also helped to find what is for them a fulfilling, cooperative life, that far fewer people would look to money, drugs, violence, or self-harm to deal with their problems. This is an old idea--it was very popular in Abrahamic religions for a long time, but of course the focus was on a god and a church as the solution. I personally think that religion is just another false hope of humanity--it might as well be liquor. Good interpersonal relationships, personal achievement, solid coping mechanisms, and a sense of life purpose are things we don't teach kids about in school, and we should--it's way more important than algebra, and I think algebra is incredibly important.
I think that mental health should be thought of like physical health. In the mainstream, you are healthy or you are mentally ill. I think that's horseshit, pardon my French. Someone can be unhealthy and engage in unhealthy behaviors without having a diagnosable mental illness. And someone's health should be checked up on regularly, whether physical or mental. People with the money or financial support should see therapists on the regular, whether they think something is wrong or not--at the very least it can establish a baseline for future care if something IS wrong.
I think that ending hundreds of thousands of cycles of abuse and violence is a much more productive effort than anything in politics. You may say that this requires a political change, and you might be right--I'd fight for that if it came to it, but that's as far into politics as I really care to go at the moment.
One of these things is not like the other...ok, two...
Drug addiction doesn't have anything to do with "priorities". Neither does suicide. I hope in my heart you never have to experience either of these things in your personal life.
I have had suicidal thoughts and self-harmed, and it was absolutely a case of misplaced priorities. The depression which led me to be in that place in my life was mostly within my power as a human to mitigate if I had only been taught how to do that. I used poor coping mechanisms, like video games, various minor addictions, and dismissive/avoidant behaviors. Focusing on my interpersonal relationships, my good qualities, and self-care instead of going down the societal rabbit hole of "what cool thing did YOU do today to justify your existence?" would have taken my very worst episode of depression from self-harm and "crazy" behavior to "fuck I really don't want to get out of bed today." When I say misplaced priorities, I don't mean "Oh I'm interested in beer instead of getting my life together." I mean people who want good lives but have no guidance in how to achieve those things--without guidance they create priorities for achieving a good life but in a disorganized, uninformed, and unsuccessful way in all but the rarest of cases.
I'm not including victims to be glib or to put those people down and make them sound like jerks. In fact, I included those people for the exact opposite reason--so that you can see the victim side of greedy CEOs and corrupt politicians. Those are people who, as children, had the potential to live a relatively balanced and healthy life--instead they were taught to substitute harmful behaviors to sustain their egos. I think that those people are part of a cycle of abuse. I think that they are not just "part of the problem," they are VICTIMS as well. Those people make terrible sacrifices to achieve whatever it is they want to achieve, and a normal life is robbed from them just as much as it is robbed from someone who is financially unsuccessful. Being rich and unsatisfied is way better than being poor and unsatisfied, sure, but neither is as good as having food on the table and a balanced life.
Your personal experience doesn't speak to anyone else's mental health. That is a dangerous game.
It's more of a philosophical claim than an anecdote. I pointed out that I've been there more to assure you that I'm not some kind of asshole calling suicide victims stupid.
I think there's a place for incrementalism. By mainstream standards I might be classified as somewhat of a radical, but I recognize that unless you are prepared to start a revolution, some changes will have to be slower or bit by bit. For me it's more of a practical issue than fear that larger change will inadvertently harm the people you are trying to help, although I do see where you are coming from.
For example, here in Florida there is a voting rights restoration amendment on the ballot in the fall. It would automatically restore voting rights to most felons after they have completed their sentence (including parole). This is an incremental change; it doesn't allow felons to vote while in prison, and it doesn't address the racial disparities in the justice system that, when combined with the current, near-permanent loss of voting rights, contribute to mass disenfranchisement of certain groups (particularly black men). It only fixes what happens after someone is tried, convicted, sentenced, and fulfills that sentence.
Despite that, I still support amendment, because it would restore voting rights to so many, nearly 1.5 million people. It is so much better than the current situation, which involves a 5-7 year wait, further years waiting in a backlog, and finally pleading in front of the governor and his cabinet, which currently rejects over 90% of people who appeal. Do I want bigger changes? Yes, but it's a start.
So I'll come at this from a peculiar direction. I've done IT project work with the whole Agile methodology, public health research, systems safety, and wide range of other disciplines that involve sorting out human nature as a byproduct of our cognitive limitations, politics, and hard science.
We need to start by differentiating the systems where radical change is perceived as low-cost and/or low-risk, from the systems where radical change is high-cost and/or high-risk, regardless of the actual complexity.. [This is based on the "benefits and barriers" model from health behavior and health education, e.g. why people don't stop smoking or start exercising, etc.]
Ensure that LGB people have the same rights as heterosexual citizens? Radical change was a matter of persuading the "right" people (e.g. powerful elites) that this was both low-cost and low-risk. Unfortunately, this persuasion couldn't convince the very people poised to take power now - lower-education, older white "Christians".
Tax the rich and redistribute enough wealth to ensure everyone has basic human necessities? This seems like it should be an unambiguous moral good, not a radical change, low-cost/low risk to the vast majority of the electorate. Centuries of propaganda and moral framing by the wealthy has labeled it as "BAD communism", "Un-Christian", "makers vs takers", etc. This is a problem of perception, not real cost or risk to the vast majority of us. Radical change is desirable and possible.
The "radical" change at issue would be limiting the power of the wealthy to purchase platforms and outshout public interest - low cost, but high-risk based on our current construction of "freedom of speech".
Ensure equitable opportunities for every citizen, regardless of their race, gender, physical ability, religion, etc.? There's no mistaking how complicated (costly and risky) this goal can become. The disparate impacts of racial/gender discrimination have massive momentum built from the body of laws, property distribution, religious doctrine, media depiction, gland-level psychological associations... We've tried war, constitutional amendments, taxation and fines, deliberate tolerance and diversity education, and a host of other solutions. The only thing that seems to work permanently is generational incremental change of perceptions, achieved by exposing children as early as possible to the diversity of humanity. This is a natural consequence of living in cities and desegregated schools, so the "incremental" change needed is changing school district boundaries.
Ah, hell, I've already gone on at a length no one will be interested in reading, but it's a basis for a functional decision-making framework as to when "radical" versus "incremental" change is appropriate.
There's no reason that both can't happen concurrently. The critical success factor for conservatives in the U.S. was that they mapped out a long-term series of incremental changes that could precipitate and sustain a radical change when all of the necessary factors aligned.
You give yourself too little credit. This is eloquently said.
I would challenge you on one point:
Isn't the exact problem here the high cost to certain people who currently have those resources and would be expected to give them up?
I expect people to act within what they believe is their self-interest (generally; there are important, often heroic, exceptions). People with resources resisting giving them up seems like it just makes sense. I would wholly expect people to bicker about what "basic human necessities" we should be providing as a society to people. UBI is unworkable in how expensive it would be, for example. You have to limit it to people of certain means/income, at which point it stops being universal and introduces a need for a means-test.
The reason that a rational conservative is likely to quibble about the end goal is the word "ensure." Because to them, people should be respected and expected to provide for their own. This responsibility that people have toward themselves and their loved ones motivates them to succeed in life, and by giving resources to them for free, you are potentially creating a system which people will come to rely upon and view as (sorry to use this word, but I'm talking about the conservative view here) entitlements.
Is there some way to make sure people have their needs met while also addressing this criticism of top-down aid packages?
Yonatan Zunger had a recent and useful speculation on the future and viability of UBI - it's viable on a cost and utility basis, if it's not a "comfortable" standard of living and has some other modifiers.
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/basic-income-job-guarantees-and-invisible-labor-c08134e7f310
There's a calculable level of redistributive burden which doesn't materially impact the standard of living of the very wealthy. Both moral and utility cases can be made for various kinds of universal distribution, to justify increasing their contribution (epicurean enjoyment of goods without guilt; higher-quality laborers, lower risk of violence, war, and preventable infectious disease; better communication and transportation networks; accelerated scientific and technological progress; preservation of common resources; and so on).
Rational conservatives can be persuaded to weigh these benefits against costs, as they were during the Reform movements at the turn of the 20th Century, and in the wake of the Great Depression and Second World War. Each is an example of incremental and radical change, respectively. There's already a kind of competitive voluntary potlatch system among some of the very wealthiest - the Giving Pledge.